Wildish Podcast: Why wild horses pull on our heartstrings

HCN.org - Listen

Episode Two: A wild mustang’s spirit stirs human emotion, making the Bureau of Land Management seem callous.

August 27 2020
Anna Coburn

From High Country News in collaboration with Alan Wartes Media, Wildish is a six-part podcast series that chronicles the complicated world of wild horse management in the Western United States. Wildish is meant to confound you. It does not offer a simple solution to one of the region’s most intractable natural resource conundrums. It is a serial on humans. You’ll hear from the activists who ache for freedom — for the wild horse to be wild — and from those who flinch at the mythology attached to the species. You’ll also get to know some of the well-meaning people inside the Bureau of Land Management, the agency stuck in the middle, faced with balancing the horse as a relic of the Wild West with its undeniable impacts on the modern Western landscape.

Episode Two

Horses and humans evolved together. Much as we do with dogs, we have a special relationship with the species. In this episode, host Anna Coburn speaks to Tracy Scott, co-founder of Steadfast Steeds wild horse sanctuary, about the family dynamics of wild horses on the range. Many advocates support the use of porcine zona pellucida (PZP), a birth control vaccine for mares that is administered with two yearly darts. This is expensive for the Bureau of Land Management, however, so most PZP darters are volunteers...

Read more and listen here:
https://www.hcn.org/articles/south-wildish-podcast-why-wild-horses-pull-on-our-heartstrings

Wildish Podcast: Wild horses in a not-so-wild West

HCN.org - Wildish Podcast - Listen

Episode One: Is federal mustang management reaching a breaking point?

Anna Coburn
Aug. 20, 2020

From High Country News in collaboration with Alan Wartes Media, Wildish is a six-part podcast series that chronicles the complicated world of wild horse management in the Western United States. Wildish is meant to confound you. It does not offer a simple solution to one of the region’s most intractable natural resource conundrums. It is a serial on humans. You’ll hear from the activists who ache for freedom — for the wild horse to be wild — and from those who flinch at the mythology attached to the species. You’ll also get to know some of the well-meaning people inside the Bureau of Land Management, the agency stuck in the middle, faced with balancing the horse as a relic of the Wild West with its undeniable impacts on the modern Western landscape.

Read more and listen to episode one:
https://www.hcn.org/articles/south-wildish-podcast-wild-horses-in-a-not-so-wild-west

Majestic Icon or Invasive Pest? A War Over Australia’s Wild Horses

NYTimes.com - Full Article

Scientists say the animals, known as brumbies, must be culled because they are destroying rivers and endangering native wildlife. Rural activists call these efforts an attack on Australian heritage.

By Livia Albeck-Ripka
June 28 2020

ANGLERS REST, Australia — Coming over the rise, Philip Maguire gripped the mane of his white gelding and rose on his heels to survey the bush land. He had hoped to be photographed mustering wild horses, but the animals weren’t playing along.

“They were sitting up there on that ridge,” Mr. Maguire said of the horses, now spooked by the human intrusion. “They’ll come back,” he huffed. “I’ll run them again.”

Mr. Maguire, a 60-year-old cattleman, is leading a campaign to prevent the Australian authorities from culling the wild horses, known as brumbies. The clash traces some of the country’s biggest fault lines, including its urban-rural divide and the legacy of colonialism.

To scientists and the politicians who support the policy, culling is a matter of environmental protection. The horses, an invasive species whose populations are booming, must be removed because they are trampling ancient ecosystems in the Australian Alps already hurt by climate change, they say.

To Mr. Maguire and his followers, the fight is about a way of life they perceive to be under threat...

Read more here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/28/world/australia/brumbies-horses-culling.html?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Riding+Camps+Cleared+to+Open+%7C+Ugly+Duckling+Transformed+%7C+Create+a+Calmer+Horse+%7C+Helping+the+Herd+Outcast&utm_campaign=HC_Enewsletter2019-Wednesday+July+1%2C+2020

BLM Tests Fertility Drug to Control Wild Herd Growth

TheHorse.com - full article

Oocyte growth factor (OGF) lasts three years or longer and is a potential alternative to PZP.

Posted by Pat Raia | May 28, 2020

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has begun testing a new fertility-control vaccine it hopes will become an alternative to contraceptive porcine zona pellucida (PZP) for controlling wild herd growth. While some wild horse advocates believe the vaccine could reduce the need for controversial wild horse gathers, others maintain that the agency is not allowing enough public scrutiny of the testing.

In use by the BLM since the 1990s, PZP is injected into wild mares to produce antibodies that prevent sperm from attaching to an egg and fertilizing it. Mares on the range receive PZP via dart gun, while gathered mares are administered by syringe. The contraceptive is effective for about a year...

Read more here:
https://thehorse.com/189045/blm-tests-fertility-drug-to-control-wild-herd-growth/?utm_medium=Welfare+enews&utm_source=Newsletter

BLM cites ‘staggering’ cost of reining in U.S. wild horses

SLTrib.com - Full Article

By Scott Sonner | The Associated Press
May 15 2020

Reno, Nev. • Federal land managers say it will take two decades and cost more than $1 billion over the first six years alone to slash wild horse populations to sustainable levels necessary to protect U.S. rangeland.

The Bureau of Land Management's latest plans envision capturing 200,000 mustangs over the next two decades. It also wants to build corrals to hold thousands more than current capacity and adopt regulations allowing the permanent sterilization of horses roaming federal lands for the first time.

"The overall funding requirements could be staggering," the bureau acknowledged in a report to Congress this week.

The strategy underscores the volatility of the decades-long controversy pitting horse advocates against ranchers whose livestock compete for federally subsidized forage across 10 western states...

Read more here:
https://www.sltrib.com/news/nation-world/2020/05/14/blm-cites-staggering-cost/

Mustangs and memories: BLM plan threatens Wyo’s wild horses

WyoFile.com - Full Article

May 5, 2020 by Chad Hanson

I won’t forget the first wild horses I saw: flared nostrils, churning hooves and dreadlock manes. I intended to go fly fishing on Green Mountain, but I made a set of mustang memories instead.

The unplanned meeting happened years ago. That doesn’t matter. I can still picture the scruffy but yet majestic animals. Experiences, and our recollections afterward, hold deep seats in our minds. Virginia Woolf considered memory “the seamstress that threads our lives together.” Our memories and the stories we tell about them are what make us people.

After you’ve seen mustangs running, sparring or caring for their foals, they stay in your thoughts. Today, the wild horses I have known make me smile in meetings at the office. They run beside me and lend a bit of grace to my ordinary old-man jog for exercise in the morning. They even lured me to the section of the library dedicated to equine lore and history. There, in the stacks, I learned that the oldest horse fossils on Earth were found in Wyoming.

About a year ago, I uncovered a map on the internet that included a wild horse herd area along the banks of Deer Creek, south of Casper. I also learned that the Bureau of Land Management removed those horses entirely. They no longer exist. At a public meeting, I showed the map to the director of the local BLM office. He looked surprised, even taken aback. He could not remember when the agency decided to eliminate wild horses from the prairie south of my hometown...

Read more here:
https://www.wyofile.com/mustangs-and-memories-blm-plan-threatens-wyos-wild-horses/

USDA Reveals Heber Wild Horse Management Plan

TheHorse.com - Full Article

The proposed action plan calls for contraception, gelding, and removals to control the herd’s population.

Posted by Pat Raia | Feb 27, 2020

The USDA Forest Service recently revealed its proposed action plan to manage horses in Arizona’s Heber Wild Horse Territory, but some wild horse advocates believe the plan is not in the horses’ best interest.
Released on Feb. 14, the 47-page Heber Wild Horse Territory plan proposes managing herd growth by vaccinating wild mares with contraceptive porcine zona pellucida (PZP) and gelding wild stallions. The plan also calls for using removals to reduce the herd from its current population of approximately 250 horses to 50-104 animals.

As a result, some wild horse advocates believe the plan is more about decimating the Heber herd that it is about preserving it...

Read more here:
https://thehorse.com/185370/usda-reveals-heber-wild-horse-management-plan/?utm_medium=Welfare+enews&utm_source=Newsletter